The Saints, LSU, and Back To The Office

As we head toward the beginning of real Summer here in South
Louisiana - you know, the day you wake up and it's H-O-T - we
might typically have vacation and hurricane season as top-of-mind
issues. But this year things are different. Who knows if you'll
be able to take a vacation? With all of our Covid anxieties do we
have the capacity to worry about hurricanes as well? Plus we have
a whole range of new unknowns: The Saints, LSU, and back to the
office. On this edition of out to Lunch, Peter Ricchiuti,
Stephanie Riegel and Christiaan Mader run through those three
current unknowns.


The Saints


It’s no secret that not everybody in the state of Louisiana has
warm feelings for New Orleans. In towns across Louisiana it's not
unusual to find a certain amount of political and financial
resentment about the amount of money and attention given to New
Orleans.


But all of that melts way when it comes to football. The
name of the team is The New Orleans Saints. But it might as well
be The Louisiana Saints. From Shreveport in the North, to
the most Southern point of Barataria Bay, Saints fans are
everywhere. And so, along with all of our individual
problems that we’re grappling with as we work our way through
this pandemic, we have one question that unites us: What’s going
to happen to football?


Whatever else happens during football season this year, one thing
is becoming increasingly apparent. And that is, football stadiums
are not going to be allowed to be packed to capacity.


Ed Lang, Chief Financial Officer for The New Orleans Saints, and
The Pelicans, discusses the question that I’m sure every
team in the league is trying to answer: Is there a way to have an
NFL season where football becomes a sport more like golf or
tennis, where most of the audience is not in the stadium, and
revenue comes from sources other than ticket sales? Is that model
financially possible for the NFL?


LSU


There are a lot of unknowns in our future. One thing we do
know for sure though is, the State of Louisiana is facing a
massive financial shortfall. Whenever this has happened in
the past, the first victims of cost-cutting out of Baton Rouge
are healthcare and education. 


This time, the Governor is proposing to cover the budget gap with
Federal funds. However, as of today, that is far from a done
deal. So it won’t be surprising if we start to hear some of the
familiar economic-crisis catch-cries coming from the
capital. One of the old faithfuls is taking the ax to LSU –
including proposals to close down whole departments. If this
happens, one department that will not be on the chopping board is
the department that might be the future of education itself –
online learning.


Dr Sasha Thackaberry is LSU’s Vice President of Online and
Continuing Education. The stay-at-home learning that colleges
have had to suddenly adopt over the Covid lockdown is being
talked about as possibly changing the nature of college education
forever. As every single department is now looking at putting at
least some of their curriculum online, Dr Thackaberry is suddenly
a central figure in the future of LSU. 


Back To The Office


Over the past couple of months, if you have an office job… Well,
we might have to come up with a different title for your
occupation.


We’ve traditionally called it “office work” because it was done
at an office. But, as we have all discovered, you can do office
work at home.


Working from home has turned out to have all kinds of
advantages.  Office workers can avoid commuting and enjoy a
more integrated work/life balance. And employers can cut down on
the expense of running an office.


But what do these changes mean for people whose life and
livelihoods revolve around the office? And there are plenty of
them. Realtors. Food courts. Commercial cleaners. And almost
every retail outlet in downtowns and CBD’s everywhere that
revolve around the foot traffic that clusters of offices
generate.


Possibly nobody is more affected by these changes - or more of an
expert at being able to predict the future of office work - than
Ashley Thibodeaux Herbert. Ashley is CEO of a New Orleans-based
company called Bart’s Office.


Bart’s Office is a full-service office moving company. But it
does more than just move office furniture. Bart’s does everything
from making sure you buy the furniture you need, to setting up
your internet network. One of the clients they worked with in
2019, for example, was setting up the new New Orleans
International Airport.


So Ashley is in a good position to look at the what might be the
future of the office.  is this whole work-from-home period
going to be something we look back on as just a temporary phase?
Or are we looking at a permanent change to our relationship with
the office?


Photos from this show by Jill Lafleur are at our website. More
conversation about the Louisiana Covid economy is here.


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